twi-ny recommended events

CAPTURING HOLBEIN: THE ARTIST IN CONTEXT

Hans Holbein the Younger, A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling (Anne Lovell?), oil on panel, ca. 1526–28 (National Gallery, London)

CAPTURING HOLBEIN: THE ARTIST IN CONTEXT
The Morgan Library & Museum, Gilder Lehrman Hall
225 Madison Ave. at Thirty-Sixth St.
Friday, May 6, $30, 2:00 – 6:30
“Capturing Holbein: The Artist in Context” continues through May 15
www.themorgan.org

“Welcome to the house / to the Haus of Holbein / Ja, ooh ja, das ist gut / Ooh ja, ja / The Haus of Holbein,” the characters sing in the hit Broadway musical Six, about the six wives of Henry VIII, the king for whom Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543) was the court painter.

Hans Lützelburger, after designs by Hans Holbein the Younger, Death and the Judge, woodcuts, ca. 1526 (the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1919)

Right now the Haus of Holbein is the Morgan Library, which is hosting the revelatory exhibition “Holbein: Capturing Character” through May 15. The German-Swiss Holbein was best known for his exquisitely detailed portraiture, including his remarkable 1527 depiction of Sir Thomas More, on loan here from the Frick. These portraits — A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling (Anne Lovell?), A Member of the Wedigh Family, the miniatures Portrait of a Court Official of Henry VIII and Simon George, Roundel Portrait of the Printer Johann Froben of Basel, a painting of his early supporter Erasmus, which features the phrase “I yield to none” — go deep inside his subjects, becoming not mere representations in oil but a look into their souls. In her catalog essay “The Pictorial Eloquence of Hans Holbein the Younger,” J. Paul Getty Museum curator Anne T. Woollett writes that the exhibit “considers how the artist engaged with the philosophical debate about the superiority of the written word over the painted image to convey an individual’s interior qualities. Holbein’s masterful manipulation of the viewing experience emerges through close examination of his drawings, paintings, and related works of art such as portrait medals and symbolic jewels.”

But amid all this glorious work, it is Holbein’s 1524–25 print series, “Images of Death,” that is most memorable. A collaboration with blockcutter Hans Lützelburger and based on the medieval danse macabre, “Images of Death” is a startling narrative that follows the skeletal Death as he confronts royals and peasants alike, holding aloft an hourglass, engaging in battle, playing instruments, and leading people to their ultimate, inescapable fate, which comes to everyone regardless of their wealth or power.

On May 6 from 2:00 to 6:30, the Morgan is hosting the afternoon symposium “Capturing Holbein: The Artist in Context” in the museum’s Gilder Lehrman Hall; the program consists of six presentations in addition to the keynote lecture, “Becoming Holbein: Art and Portraiture,” by Jochen Sander of the Städel Museum: “Flexibility and Rapport: Holbein’s Working Method” by Woollett, “Inherent Ingenuity: Holbein’s Portrait of Georg Gisze (1532)” by Alexander Marr of Cambridge University, “Drawing in Time: Portrait Studies by Holbein and His Contemporaries” by the Morgan’s Austėja Mackelaitė, “The Contexts for Character in Holbein’s Narrative Prints” by Jeanne Nuechterlein of York University, “Metalwork Design Drawings from the Circle of Hans Holbein the Younger” by Olenka Horbatsch of the British Museum, and “‘Foolish Curiosity’: Holbein’s Earliest English Afterlives” by Adam Eaker of the Met.

Even if you can’t make the symposium — perhaps the Morgan will record it and make it available later online — be sure to see the exhibit, co-organized with the Getty, before it leaves town. As Morgan director Colin B. Bailey says in the above video, “[Holbein] was the greatest artist of the sixteenth century working in England but really one of the greatest artists of the European Renaissance. His works are rare, they’re fragile, they’re precious, they’re rarely lent, and that’s why this exhibition is such an opportunity.”

WISH YOU WERE HERE

Five friends get ready for a wedding in world premiere of Sanaz Toossi’s Wish You Were Here at Playwrights Horizons (photo by Joan Marcus)

WISH YOU WERE HERE
Playwrights Horizons, Mainstage Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 5, $49-$89
www.playwrightshorizons.org

First-generation Iranian-American playwright Sanaz Toossi follows up her wonderful professional debut, English, which ran earlier this year at the Atlantic, with the even better Wish You Were Here, which opened tonight at Playwrights Horizons.

Written in 2018 as her NYU thesis in response to Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban and anti-immigration policies, English is set in a TOEFL classroom in Karaj, Iran, in 2008, where four Iranian adults are learning to speak English as they and their teacher question the meaning of home and how language and culture impact their identity.

Written in 2019 as a response to Trump’s threat to retaliate against Iran after the Western Asian republic shot down an unmanned US drone, Wish You Were Here follows the trials and tribulations of five close female friends in Karaj from 1978 to 1991 who experience what Toossi calls “detached homesickness” as the nation goes through major changes, from the Islamic Revolution to the Iran-Iraq War.

The story unfolds in ten scenes that all take place in the same well-accoutred living room. Salme (Roxanna Hope Radja) is in a giant wedding gown, getting ready for her special day. Shideh (Artemis Pebdani) is giving Zari (Nikki Massoud) a pedicure, announcing so everyone can hear, “Your toes are disgusting.” (There are a lot of bare feet throughout the play.) Nazanin (Marjan Neshat) makes adjustments to the dress while flirting with Rana (Nazanin Nour), who is très elegant in her shiny silk pajamas, smoking a cigarette as she does Salme’s hair.

As they continue to primp, they regale one another with a string of hysterical dirty jokes and good-natured insults. “I’m steaming out of my dress, Shideh,” Nazanin says, referring to her nether regions. “Ew,” Shideh replies. “My pussy could iron a shirt,” Nazanin adds. Rana asks, “Oh what kind of shirt?”

Shideh (Artemis Pebdani) has a lot to say as Nazanin (Marjan Neshat) applies makeup to Zari (Nikki Massoud) and Salme (Roxanna Hope Radja) hovers behind them (photo by Joan Marcus)

“If a man saw her toes, I think his penis would fall off,” Shideh says about Zari. Rana admits, “Silk does not breathe well. Whatever you’re smelling is me and I don’t want to talk about it.” And Zari advises Salme what to do when encountering a man’s member: “When you first see one, smile. Smile so big. Smile bigger than you’ve ever smiled in your life. Like you need to swallow a plate.”

It’s an enchanting scene in which we fall in love with the characters while learning key facts about each of them: Shideh is studying to be a doctor and is considering going to school in America; Salme is the most religious one, regularly praying, believing that you “can’t jinx G-d’s will”; the easygoing Zari is in the market for a husband; and the ultracool Rana and the occasionally mean Nazanin plan to avoid marriage and children, although Nazanin lets it be known that she wants to eventually return to Iran after living it up in Miami. (Coincidentally, in English, Neshat plays a teacher who made a life for her and her family in London but came back to Karaj, perhaps regretting that decision.)

A year later it is Zari who is getting married, but a pall is cast over the proceedings when Shideh mentions Rana’s name; Rana, who is Jewish, has gone missing, along with her parents and brother. Salme is trying to find her, but Nazanin says, as if trying to convince herself, “If she wanted to vanish into thin air, with no trace, no word, without shit, then that’s how she wanted to do it.”

Nazanin (Marjan Neshat) and Salme (Roxanna Hope Radja) cement a bond in Wish You Were Here (photo by Joan Marcus)

But as we soon discover, Nazanin has a problem with people leaving, whether it’s a friend moving away with a new husband, another friend going off to study abroad, or a best friend disappearing in a country becoming ever-more dangerous. As many Iranians choose to escape their homeland because of war and an oppressive regime, Nazanin feels stuck, resenting those who attempt to make a new life for themselves and their family instead of getting out while she still can. It’s a bitter pill, especially when seen in retrospect. “Why don’t I want to leave?” she wonders. It’s a question people ask themselves every day across the globe.

Wish You Were Here is directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch (Animal, The Year of Magical Thinking) with a warm and welcoming intimacy that invites us into these women’s complex lives with, as the characters often say, “no judging.” The comforting set is by Arnulfo Maldonado, with handsome costumes by Sarah Laux, subtle lighting by Reza Behjat, and meticulous sound by Sinan Refik Zafar and Brian Hickey.

The hundred-minute play was also written by Toossi as a love letter to her mother and her mother’s friends, immigrants who started all over in the United States; parts of the story are based on real experiences. Toossi, who was born and raised in Orange County, California, and is now based in Brooklyn, has beautifully depicted the ups and downs, the sheer joys and the petty jealousies, that define female friendship.

Over the course of thirteen years, Iran underwent tremendous change, but Toossi does not focus so much on world events as on how they impact the women’s relationships with each other; the scenes involving only two of the women at a time are particularly emotional and heart-wrenching as Toossi explores the many layers of attachment, mere cordiality, and sincere love the women share. While Salme is afraid of pulling off the tape when Nazanin is waxing her legs for fear of hurting her physically, Zari is not afraid to tell Nazanin, “You have a way of making me feel really lonely.”

The cast is exceptional; it truly does seem like you’re watching five friends go about their daily existence, dealing with love and loss as they dance wildly to a song on the radio, hide under a table during a bombing, kneel down to pray to Mecca, or deliver yet another pussy joke. In between scenes, the actors make minor changes to the living room to indicate a shift in location, moving around tables or opening the curtain in the back to reveal a bright garden. It’s as if the five actors, and the audience, need a short break from the intensity of the play while getting ready to see what the next year holds in store for everyone. I can’t wait to see what Toossi has in store for all of us next.

A CASE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

Ryan (Will Brill) and Keith (Kyle Beltran) find out they have more in common than they think in Signature world premiere (photo by Emilio Madrid)

A CASE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday-Sunday through May 29, $35-$70
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Samuel D. Hunter’s brilliantly human A Case for the Existence of God itself makes a strong case for the existence of God. In the first work of his three-play, five-year residency at the Signature, the award-winning Idaho native has written an almost brutally realistic but gentle story of a down-to-earth bromance between two thirtysomethings facing single fatherhood with excitement and apprehension.

The ninety-minute play takes place in a small cubicle open at an angle to the audience; above it hovers a rectangular industrial office light. The cubicle is surrounded by a vast emptiness, as if alone in the universe. The two actors remain seated in the same chairs for nearly the entire show; time and location shifts are indicated by the dialogue and subtle changes in lighting. (The spare set is by Arnulfo Maldonado, with lighting by Tyler Micoleau and sound by Christopher Darbassie.)

Ryan (Will Brill) has come to see Keith (Kyle Beltran), a mortgage broker he met at their children’s daycare; Ryan, who is white and straight, works at the local yogurt plant in Twin Falls, Idaho, and is going through a divorce that involves a custody battle over his fifteen-month-old daughter, Krista. Keith is fostering to adopt Willa, who is the same age as Krista. Ryan is trying to get a loan to purchase a twelve-acre plot that used to belong to his family; he is desperate to recover a part of the past to ensure a better future for him and his daughter. Meanwhile, Keith, who is Black and gay and without many prospects for a partner, is frustrated by problems with the adoption process and Willa’s birth family.

The two men form a quick bond because neither of their lives is going as they’d planned or expected. “I hope this isn’t weird of me to say but — I think we share a specific kind of — sadness. You and me,” Ryan says to Keith in a deeply touching moment. Keith doesn’t respond at first but a few days later says, “I think you’re right. I think we share something, too.”

Samuel D. Hunter’s new play explores a growing friendship between two men trying to be single fathers (photo by Emilio Madrid)

As Keith works hard to find a way to get Ryan, who has no collateral, the loan, they become friends, hanging out together, watching movies, comparing their kids’ sleep habits, drinking whiskey, discussing mental illness and bullying, and growing more and more honest with each other. Keith explains his interest in early music, while Ryan doesn’t hesitate to admit that he doesn’t know what “harrowing” and “tacitly” mean but loves when his daughter says “popsicle.”

Embarrassed by his financial situation, Ryan tells Keith, “I just think there’s like a really specific kind of stress that I have about money? I mean I know everyone stresses out about money, but I’m not talking about that. It’s like . . . I guess I feel like having money is the only real permission I have to be alive? Like without it, I don’t have permission to exist.”

Meanwhile, Keith shares his innermost fears with Ryan. “I’m like the most anxious dad on the planet. I feel the phone in my pocket vibrate and I immediately think someone is calling me to tell me that my daughter is dead,” the broker says. Later he confesses, “I’m so scared, Ryan. I’m so fucking scared.” The anxiety both men experience is palpable and wholly relatable in the general sense of what we all have to deal with on a daily basis; it’s just unusual to see such remarks occur between two guys, especially a pair who are probably not used to divulging their feelings with anyone. “I feel like my life is so centered on being a dad right now, it’s actually just nice to have a conversation with another adult,” Ryan says. It’s actually just nice to hear these conversations as well.

Keith and Ryan are searching for what we all want, something that none of us ultimately can have: permanence. As we watch them struggle to get their lives in order, we can’t help but think about the impermanence in our own lives as well.

The forty-year-old Hunter’s previous plays all feature ordinary people up against ordinary situations, seeking companionship and connection, often with the past: The Whale is about a six-hundred-pound recluse; Greater Clements details an effort to save a former mining town from closing down; The Few focuses on a man and his former lover deciding if they should save the paper they run for lonely interstate truckers; A Bright New Boise warns against the dangers of blind faith; and Lewiston/Clarkston is a pair of one-acts in which the audience eats dinner together in between shows.

Samuel D. Hunter’s A Case for the Existence of God takes place in a small cubicle (photo by Emilio Madrid)

When Keith explains that harmony did not always exist in the Western musical tradition, Ryan is flummoxed. “That’s so sad,” he says. “I guess I feel guilty. I mean I’m trying to picture living in a world that only has music without harmony, I can’t even —. And I’m not like even a music guy. Jesus.” Keith asks, “But why does that make you feel guilty?” Ryan answers, “Because like — I’ve just been taking it for granted my entire life.” For him “harmony” means companionship and connection, an alternative to being alone.

Sensitively directed by Tony and Obie winner David Cromer (The Band’s Visit, A Prayer for the French Republic, The Sound Inside) with a sincere affection for both characters, A Case for the Existence of God beautifully explores the pain and pleasure of being a single father, balancing the constant angst and worry with the joy and love. In some ways it is reminiscent of Robert Benton’s 1979 Oscar winner Kramer vs. Kramer, one of the first major films to intelligently and fairly depict a father (Dustin Hoffman) fighting for custody of his son while going through a bitter divorce.

But the play, which Hunter wrote shortly after he and his husband adopted a child and sought to buy a two-bedroom apartment in a New York City co-op, is seen only through the eyes of the two men, flawed, complex human beings played with tenderness and understanding by Beltran (Blue Ridge, The Amateurs) and Brill (Oklahoma!, Tribes), who are used to being together in tight quarters; they were roommates while studying drama at Carnegie Mellon. Just as they don’t judge each other — well, they do, but then they don’t — we don’t judge them. There’s no toxic masculinity in the air, no homophobia or racism, no frat jokes, just an ever-deepening platonic friendship between a gay Black man and a straight white man.

“This feels like a chance to — hit the reset button,” Ryan says about buying the property. It’s a button we all reach for at one time or another in our lives. And if you’re searching for proof of the existence of a higher power, some kind of supreme being, Hunter’s play is a prime piece of evidence that there must be something bigger than us out there.

JODY SPERLING/TIME LAPSE DANCE PERFORMANCE SERIES

Wind Rose is part of special performance series by Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance (photo by Annie Drew)

Who: Jody Sperling/Time Lapse Dance
What: Climate-change-themed performance series
Where: The Theater at the 14th Street Y, 344 East Fourteenth St. between Second & Third Aves., and online
When: May 5-7, $10-$100
Why: New York–based choreographer, dancer, writer, and scholar Jody Sperling, the founding artistic director of Time Lapse Dance (TLD), continues her climate-change-themed collaboration with Alaskan-born composer, sound artist, and eco-acoustician Matthew Burtner with a series of live events May 5-7 at the Theater at the 14th Street Y. TLD will present four shows that investigate the relationship between the body and the environment, with dancers Frances Barker, Morgan Bontz, Carly Cerasuolo, Anika Hunter, Maki Kitahara, Sarah Tracy, Nicole Lemelin, and Sperling and live music by Burtner.

The bill, which marks the company’s return to live, indoor performance in front of an audience after having made numerous dance films during the pandemic, includes the stage premiere of Plastic Harvest, about plastic pollution, performed by dancers immersed in a world of plastic bags; 2019’s Wind Rose, a work about breath and atmosphere for five dancers in flowing white costumes and a soloist in black; 2015’s Ice Cycle, about the melting of the ice caps; and an excerpt from the processional American Elm. It all begins with a gala on May 5 at 7:00 featuring a full performance, an artist talk, and a benefit reception. On May 6 at 7:00, a full performance can be experienced in-person or livestreamed. There will be a family-friendly in-person program May 7 at 2:00, followed by an in-person-only finale at 7:00.

MACBETH

Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga star as a devious husband and wife in Sam Gold’s unusual take on the Scottish play at the Longacre (photo by Joan Marcus)

MACBETH
Longacre Theatre
220 West 48th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 10, $35-$425
macbethbroadway.com

As you enter the Longacre Theatre to see the latest conjuring of Macbeth, the thane’s first appearance on the Great White Way since Terry Hands’s 2000 version with Kelsey Grammer lasted just thirteen performances, the sparse stage is a scene of activity. On one side, three people are cooking soup while listening to a podcast. Various others wander about or are busy in the wings. Front and center, the ghost light glows — a superstition that is believed to keep at bay supernatural beings who haunt theaters and can curse shows, although it usually is turned on only after everyone has left and the venue is empty. During the pandemic lockdown, many theaters kept their ghost lights on in the hope of eventually returning. Thus, once inside the Longacre, you feel as if you’ve walked into some kind of rehearsal that is getting ready to close up for the night.

More than any other of his major works, Shakespeare’s 1606 tragedy invites experimentation of a high order. In the past fifteen years, I’ve seen no fewer than ten adaptations of the Scottish play, including an all-women version that took place at a contemporary girls school, a re-creation of Orson Welles’s radio production, a presentation that required the audience to make its way through a dark heath to get to their seats, one set during the cold war and prominently featuring a bevy of video projections, another occurring inside the head of an institutionalized man, and a mashup with a Japanese manga that moved the action to a blue boxing ring.

Like King Lear, it also attracts big-name star power; among those who have portrayed the thane of Cawdor in New York since 2006 are Sir Patrick Stewart, Ethan Hawke, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Alan Cumming, Liev Schreiber, and Corey Stoll. Now comes James Bond himself, Daniel Craig, in a production helmed by Tony and Obie winner Sam Gold, who is responsible for the much-derided 2019 Broadway revival of Lear with Glenda Jackson in the title role.

Macbeth (Daniel Craig) speaks with a pair of murderers (Danny Wolohan and Michael Patrick Thornton) in Shakespeare adaptation (photo by Joan Marcus)

While the trio, who turn out to be the three witches (portrayed alternately by Phillip James Brannon, Bobbi MacKenzie, Maria Dizzia, Che Ayende, Eboni Flowers, and Peter Smith), continue stirring the pot, Michael Patrick Thornton, who plays the nobleman Lennox, wheels onto the stage and provides a curtain speech about James I’s obsession with witches in the seventeenth century while also asking the audience to, all at once, shout out the name of the show, which is supposed to bring bad luck when spoken inside a theater. Very few people joined in.

Gold has pared down the production to the point where no single actor is the star; there’s an equality among the diverse cast that does not force us to swoon at either Craig or Oscar, Emmy, and Olivier nominee Ruth Negga as Lady Macbeth and instead allows the audience to appreciate the other participants. The text is delivered without many flourishes, as famous lines come and go at a regular pace, with some favorites getting cut; for example, the witches never say, “Double, double toil and trouble.” The actors are dressed in Suttirat Larlarb’s contemporary costumes; Macbeth’s succession from military jacket to paisley bathrobe to fluffy white fur coat is a hoot.

Christine Jones’s set is the antithesis of royalty; the “thrones” are two old, ratty chairs, and the banquet table lacks fancy dinnerware. The crown worn by King Duncan (Paul Lazar) is just plain silly, like a high school prop, but even funnier is when Lazar, following the monarch’s murder, removes his fat suit in front of us and proceeds to play other characters. There is much doubling and tripling of actors, so it’s not always clear who’s who. Amber Gray excels as Banquo and her ghost but is seen later as a gentlewoman. Danny Wolohan is Seyton, a lord, a murderer, and a bloody captain who has lost part of one leg. Emeka Guindo is both Fleance and young Siward. Downtown legend Lazar also shows up as old Siward and the porter, who, in front of the curtain, discusses with Macduff (Grantham Coleman, though I saw understudy Ayende) and Lennox how drink affects sexual prowess. To further the comparison, Macbeth later pops open a can of light beer.

Jeremy Chernick’s special effects feature lots of blood, some of which is added to the simmering soup (along with innards). As Macbeth warns, “Blood will have blood.”

Three witches (Phillip James Brannon, Bobbi MacKenzie, Maria Dizzia) stir up a cauldron of trouble in Macbeth (photo by Joan Marcus)

So what’s it all about? Though uneven, Gold’s adaptation subverts our expectations about stardom, Broadway, and Shakespeare. It’s hard to believe that this is the same story told with such fierce elegance by Joel Coen in his 2021 Oscar-nominated film, The Tragedy of Macbeth, with a dominating Denzel Washington as Macbeth and a haunting Frances McDormand as his devious partner. In fact, under Gold’s supervision, the real standout is Thornton, who relates to the audience with a sweet warmth and playful sense of humor. However, as Macbeth also says, “And nothing is, but what is not.”

Gold (Fun Home; A Doll’s House, Part 2) previously directed Craig (Betrayal, A Steady Rain) as Iago in an intimate and compelling Othello at New York Theatre Workshop and Oscar Isaac in Hamlet at the Public; Negga has played Ophelia at London’s National Theatre and Hamlet at St. Ann’s Warehouse. The ads for Macbeth might push the star draw of this new production, but that is not what Gold is focusing on.

He may not be making any grand statements about lust, greed, and power, but he is investigating the common foibles of humanity, the desires we all have and our considerations of how far we will go to achieve them. Is he completely successful? No, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t given us an intriguing, provocative, unconventional, absurdly comic, and, yes, highly entertaining production of one of the greatest tragedies ever written.

As Lady Macbeth advises, “What’s done, cannot be undone.”

CHASING ANDY WARHOL

Audience members chase Andy Warhol through the East Village in immersive production (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

CHASING ANDY WARHOL
Astor Plaza, Broadway at East Eighth St.
Thursday, Friday, and Sunday through June 12, $80
online slide show
www.chasingandywarhol.com
www.batedbreaththeatre.org

The world has spent more than half a century chasing Andy Warhol. Our obsession with Drella, as he was known to his close friends — a combination of Dracula and Cinderella — developed quickly from his carefully constructed public image, his genre-busting films and Pop art, his (and our) fascination with celebrity, and the beautiful and unusual people he surrounded himself with, beginning with his emergence as an art superstar and fashion icon in the 1960s and continuing well past his death in 1987 at the age of fifty-eight.

In the last few years alone, works by or about Warhol, born Andrew Warhola Jr. in Pittsburgh, have been part of such exhibitions and films as “Andy Warhol: Photo Factory” at Fotografiska, the Todd Haynes documentary The Velvet Underground, “Andy Warhol: Revelation” at the Brooklyn Museum, “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure,”“Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks at the Guggenheim,” and “Alice Neel: People Come First” at the Met in addition to the brand-new Netflix series The Andy Warhol Diaries.

Now comes Chasing Andy Warhol, a guerrilla-theater-like immersive presentation by the Manhattan-based Bated Breath company in which an audience of no more than sixteen at a time follows Andy Warhol through the streets of the East Village, not far from many of his old haunts. The show begins in Astor Plaza, where you are given an old red plastic View Master to look at some photo collages to get you in the mood. Then an excited young “tour guide” (Jmonet Hill, Annika Rudolph, or Fé Torres; I saw Rudolph, who was delightfully energetic), carrying a small suitcase and a boombox (through which she blasts the soundtrack) and identifying herself as the world’s biggest Andy fan, is surprised by a pair of Warhols in blue dresses and heels — one of whom pops a small balloon that has the word “art” on it. They run off, and she sets out to find him.

As she leads us down Lafayette and Bowery to Great Jones and Bleecker, there are wigged Warhols in blue, black, and white everywhere (Kat Berton, Grayson Bradshaw, Alysa Finnegan, Teal French-Levine, Youran Lee, Marisa Melito, Luca Villa), but she is after the “real” one in red (Jake Malavsky, Brandon P. Raines, or Kyle Starling). The multiple Andys evoke Warhol’s silkscreen style of printing multiple images of Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Mouse, flowers, Elvis Presley, and other subjects in different colors.

Along the way, as the tour guide shares snippets about Warhol’s life and art, we encounter a puppet of child Andy (operated by Taylor McKenzie or Kayla Prestel) watching Ginger Rogers (Finnegan) posing in an empty white frame; Warhol and the puppet looking into a mirror that describes one of his medical disorders, Saint Vitus’ dance, which affected his movement; Andy engaging in a flirtatious dance with a hot basketball player (Mitchell Ashe) involving a wheeled fashion rack; a movie star (Katherine Winter) posing for paparazzi in front of a Chase bank (Chase — get it?); a dance in an alcove of stone chess tables; and fated meetups with Valerie Solanas (Alessandra Ruiz, who also plays Warhol’s mother, Julia) — just wait till you see what she uses for a gun — and Edie Sedgwick (Antonia Santangelo) in a glittering short dress.

Andy is never without his camera, and the audience is encouraged to take photos and video, but don’t get too caught up in documenting it or you’ll miss lots of cute small touches and clever references. A significant part of the fun is also watching people on the street passing by, wondering what’s going on. Of course, they immediately know it’s Warhol — has there ever been a more recognizable figure in New York City? — and many of them stop and take pictures, big smiles on their faces. But as one of the lucky sixteen audience members, wearing a clearly visible yellow Andy sticker, you can’t help but feel special, like you’re part of Warhol’s inner Factory circle. And the cast, which performs the seventy-five-minute show in forty-five-minute overlapping intervals, deserves extra kudos for strutting their stuff on the sidewalks of New York, particularly during these fraught times, where anything can happen at any time.

Chasing Andy Warhol is created and directed by Bated Breath artistic director Mara Lieberman, with fanciful choreography by Rachel Leigh Dolan, jubilant costumes by Christopher F. Metzger, sets by Christian Fleming, Meg McGuigan, and Jerry Schiffer, lighting by Joyce Liao, and sound and projections by Mark Van Hare. I have to admit that I was disappointed in two of the company’s recent indoor productions, Unmaking Toulouse-Lautrec and Beneath the Gavel, but now I’m kicking myself for having missed its immersive, outdoor, on-the-move Voyeur: The Windows of Toulouse-Lautrec, which they staged during the pandemic.

Chasing Andy Warhol concludes in an empty bar, where Warhol’s legacy as the original social media superstar is briefly explored. Could there ever have been a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok without Warhol’s obsession with public image and infectious celebration of celebrity and oneself? And, in turn, our obsession with Warhol, who managed his public persona like no one else?

“I am a deeply superficial person,” Warhol said. He also pointed out, “It’s not what you are that counts; it’s what they think you are.” In Chasing Andy Warhol, Lieberman and her talented team delve into the complex enigmatic character in unique, spirited ways, without avoiding his blemishes, as they pursue the mystery that was, and ever will be, Andy Warhol.

HOMECOMING: DANCE

Who: Marc Nuñez and Gotham Dance Theater, Candace Brown and Soul Project Dance
What: World premiere dance works
Where: The Tank’s Proscenium Theater, 312 West 36th St.
When: April 29 – May 13, $35-$50
Why: The Tank’s 2022 Homecoming Season, which began with Miriam Pultro’s rock requiem Glass Town, the Cybertank fiction game Feast, and Ioli Andreadi and Aris Asproulis’s history play Filiki Eteria: The Brotherhood behind the Revolution, continues with a pair of world-premiere dances dealing with crisis, adversity, and recovery.

First up is Gotham Dance Theater’s re:motions, running April 29 to May 8. Directed and choreographed by Marc Nuñez, who founded GDT in 2015 as a contemporary and street dance company dedicated to social involvement and diversity, the piece, a melding of music, movement, and theater, looks at love and loss in a world overtaken by technology; it will be danced by writer Nadia Khayrallah, rehearsal assistants Davonna Batt and Michaela Ternasky-Holland, and Sarina Gonzalez, Celinna Haber, Jasmine Huang, and Stephanie Shin, with spoken-word narration by Lyndsay Dru Corbett.

May 4-13 brings Candace Brown’s While We Wait: A Tale of Fallen Fruit to the Tank’s Proscenium Theater, the evening-length debut from the dancer, teacher, director, and choreographer’s new company, Soul Project Dance. Exploring love and community while inspiring and uplifting both the artists and the audience, the work will be performed by Julia Alaimo, Andrew Mulet, Hamly Tavarez, Jada Clark, Masumi Hambayashi, Byron Tittle, Nicole Cardona, Jackie Torres, Caitlin Marks, Jay Mills, LJ Bologna, and Leah Joy Faircloth.